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Youngblood has maybe the ugliest art I have ever seen in a book. The artists have ripped off Gil Kane poses in parts (and there's an okay homage to Gil Kane and the X-Men in the book). But the line work is terrible and the anatomy is amateurish. The backgrounds, lacking shadows, are very two-dimensional looking and often cluttered with unnecessary cross hatching. Visually, this book is a mess. There is no flow, no sense of storytelling.

The story itself is not as bad as the art. But that's hardly a compliment. Most of the time, the book seems to be laughing at how horrible Image comics were in the '90s. And I guess that would be fine, if it were done well. But the lines about women characters posing as if they were Penthouse models simply draw attention to all the visual flaws in the book. What's more, the dialogue in this book is really corny and stilted and makes the transition from scene to scene extremely jarring. "Let's save the day," one character says as the team races into action. Even if it's meant in an ironic, hipster kind of way, that line is still horrible.

I guess the character introductions are handled efficiently. But really, the Youngbloods aren't characters. They are like the X-Men or the Avengers, only with really ugly outfits and really, really stupid names.

This book, overall, is a complete embarrassment. It should never have been printed.

Long story - Where to begin.....the plot is as dull as 17th century axe. The heroes fall into two categories: serious or sex-crazed. There's one that kinda fits in with both categories, but the characters as a whole are unlikable. The art team of Jon Malin and Rob Liefeld doesn't produce anything worth of praise. It's just not pleasant to the eyes.

BI #1 feels like the same premise that started off Morrison's run on Batman & Robin. Begins with a flash-forward to someone a crucial character supposedly being killed, then backtracks to fill in those blanks while introducing a new and fairly uninteresting animal-themed psycho-killer. Qu'est-ce que c'est? I honestly can't decide if this is another example of a modern comic book writer obsessed with symmetrical narrative themes, like the way Hickman book-ended his giant FF arc with identical scenes, or if it's just a re-tread of Morrison's greatest hits. Either way, it feels like the reader is being asked to fall for the same trick twice. And since Batman's league of Batmen or whatever they are are shown in this issue bragging about the ways they faked their own deaths to operate in secret, it's a far stretch of credibility anyway to think that anything else is going on with Damien. Plus there is no way Batman let the goatboy turn and give him that shot to the face, let alone the shot at Damien.

The scenes with the Crypt Keeper in the white hoodie are pretty silly, but thanks to the art team for puttting some damn color in the comic book (of course later when it's collected they'll probably digitally take it all out--see Flex Mentallo).

+1 for Damien becoming a vegetarian, and Bat Cow too.

7

VERSUS

Youngblood #1 re-covers old ground as well, in this case the shit-soaked soil that was exclusive territory of Image Comics.in the 1990s, a dark time for stapled pamphlets across the kingdom indeed. Which is ripe for satire, but Image went with an homage instead. I paid less than 5 cents a book for my '90s Image Comics when I tried to read them, and it was still too much. Why Image would go back to charging their readers actual money for this shit, I have no idea.

-1 for letting "words and all" instead of "warts and all" see print--ERIC STEPHENSON, EDITOR!